Monday, Sept 29

Today we talked about North's "The Idea of a Writing Center," and "Revisiting 'The Idea of a Writing Center." We identified his fundamental focus in the first essay as on how writing centers are (mistakenly) perceived and his focus in the second essay as on de-romanticizing the representations in the first. As Nick pointed out though - in both essays he remains clear that writing centers are student centered and about writing as process; that they serve a "whole community," work on writing at all points in the writing process and are not defined by isolated points within composing such as checking spelling & punctuation and etc. Within this discussion we spent some time talking about practices for dealing with "bad assignments" and comments/responses/teaching processes surrounding student work that do help them learn more about writing.

For the bad assignment problem, Marie suggested that tutors might ask about what else is going on in class, and Stephanie suggested that students might talk to the teacher. Both of these are good suggestions - depending on who the student is and who the teacher is. I suggested that sometimes students need to have you listen and receive their frustration before you move on the writing issues associated with their problems. You don't have "solve" their problems - but to have a constructive session - many times you have to hear them and acknowledge them.

Also - in our discussion of Lunsford as compared to North, Erin pointed out that North was to the point & Lunsford was questioning and putting forward conflicting points of view. This led to a long digression from me about learning and cognitive/psychological development - and how students in their late teens and early twenties are just at the place where they are STARTING to be willing to think about "answers" in more complex ways. Until learners move out of what is called "dualistic" (black v white/right or wrong) thinking - where rules can determine what is "right" - to relativistic thinking - where the particular situation determines what to do - articles/assignments/and interactions that do not provide clear, rule-bound directions for what to do are going to feel "unclear" or even "wrong." As a tutor, you will need to make a judgment about students' developmental level, and you will need to work in a tutoring style that reflects that judgment. Your style should take into account where students are AND the fact that being a "good" writer requires students to learn when to break the rules - all the while remembering that students can't break rules successfully until they know what they are. Yes. That is a lot to take in. Development does not end at the close of puberty: changes in the way the brain works and the way we think continue throughout the lifespan; these changes generally occur in a sequence and at predictable "stages" => so that we learn "differently" in every stage. Having some information about how to recognize the different learning patterns can help you as a tutor.

Hopefully this summary of that discussion along with talk in class will be of some help. For those of you who are interested in how student's cognitive development affects tutoring - sources you might want to look at include:

Chandler, Sally. "Oral History across Generations: Age, Generation, and Oral Testimony." Oral History, 33(2), 2005, 48-56.

Evans, Nancy J., Deanna S. Forney and Florence Guido-DiBrito. 1998. Student Development in College: Theory, Research and Practice. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.

Hays, Janice. 1995. “Intellectual Parenting and a Developmental Feminist Pedagogy.” In Women’s Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. ed. Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig, 153-191. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.


For class on Wednesday - you were given a "bad assignment" => write a 1-2 page analysis of North. The purpose is for you to reflect on the kinds of problems students confront as they write "bad assignments" and to gain some experience conducting a session on a paper that where students are given very little direction or confusing information about what the instructor expects. Bring your essay to class on a jumpdrive or printed so you can work on it in a writing session. Also - review LOC in McAndrew and Reigstad (as some of you may be in a place to work on these issues in your essays).

For your Blog, do some more writing on your writing center philosophy. As we discussed in class - your philosophy will state your assumptions about what learning is and how it takes place - in terms of what writing centers should "do." For example, North seems to believe that knowledge is primarily created through social interactions, but that some part of what we know is also "there" inside the student. As a result - his fundamental conception of a writing center is that it is about writing process (Burkean parlor) and student centered (Burkean parlor with basis in Garret). See what you can do. I realize a lot of this language is new (pedagogy, epistemology, - even thinking about "philosophy" in the concrete way that this task demands) but from your conversations in class you seem to be doing fine. Learning to talk about your teaching and your teaching practice in these terms will help you in the teaching field - and in academia in general.

Finally, in class on Wednesday you are going to conduct tutoring sessions on the North essays - and you will take notes on those sessions. Our focus is moving more and more toward taking notes on your sessions - since that is how you are going to gather your "data" for your final project. At the beginning of class, I am going to ask you to do some writing about your notes on previous tutoring sessions. What kinds of notes provided the best information? What kind of strategy did you use [for what to write - for how to balance observing and listening - for how to create a balance between what is said and what is going on (descriptions of actors, actions and setting) etc] ? How are you going to modify that strategy? Your notes are the heart of your project. The better your notes - the more basis you have for developing your "theories" about what is going on in tutoring sessions (why some sessions work and others do not).

Whew. That was a lot to write. Now it is here for us - and we can read it and think about it. We are really starting to get into the fun part of this course (not that it all hasn't been fun). I will be giving you a presentation on your research project on Oct. 15 - and we will brainstorm topics and talk about what exactly you will be doing at that time. Still - it is not too early for you to start thinking about what interests you about tutoring - about something you might want to study. So as we conduct the rest of the in-class sessions - watch yourself and your classmates. See if there is something about the way tutoring works (or doesn't work) that interests you. Write it down. Ask some questions. I fully expect that there will be some papers in writing center journals and presentations at writing center conferences from your work in this class. Your discussions and reflections in your blog are very strong.

See you on Wednesday!